Japan has been in our bucket list for ages. I do not even remember why it was so anticipated anymore. Yet, as I landed in Japan, on my first real holiday after 4.5 years, there was a fear. Will the place live up to my anticipation (without even knowing what I was anticipating)?
Way back, when I was doing my under graduation, I had a bee in my bonnet (perhaps planted by my mother), that I should learn a foreign language. This bee had turned to Japanese first and when the timings did not work out, I had tried to see whether French would work and when even that did not work out, I had enrolled for German classes. Years later, I ended up spending almost 2 decades in Germany. Perhaps, this was the anticipation. If I had managed to join Japanese classes, I would not even have thought about German. Though there was no correlation between me moving to Germany and my language classes, I often wonder whether the stars would have made me move to Japan had I taken Japanese classes? M, to whom I tell this line of thought, dismisses this line of argument summarily.
So, with that in mind, I watched, as the first signboards came up once we landed in Tokyo. It was beautiful. There is a very different beauty to this language than Chinese. There were more edges and boxes.
As we cross to the immigration, we are waved across the non Japanese passports and along the queue. The queue moves very fast and soon we are at the counter. Unlike other countries, they accept the husband and wife separately. A young officer, quickly checks the passport and waves me through. My husband joins a few seconds later. We realize later that it is possible to fill all the information online beforehand so that no paper form filling is needed. We tuck away that information for later. As we come to the baggage claim, the baggage is already doing its rounds. They have been arranged vertically to save the space on the belt.
We pick up our luggage and move to the train station. We realize that either cash or physical card is required for getting our next tickets. A Srilankan lady is at the counter. She explains everything clearly, we go back and make the payment. She gives us a ticket for the Keisei Skyliner train to Ueno station and along with that, we have the option to buy a subway ticket for the next three days.
Having lived in Germany and travelled quite a bit in places with subways we are comfortable with finding the directions. As we come to the platform, there is a barrier in this platform, before entering the train, where people wait. The barriers open at the doors automatically when the train stops. Unsurprisingly, thanks to what we have read, there are queues where each door is anticipated. We join one of the queues. As we get into the train, I am struck by the presence of polite reminders everywhere and M is struck by the amount of Manga presence. The stickers are similar on each column of seats. The B seats have the Manga politeness reminders.
As we get down, I notice someone waiting outside with a cleaning cart. This person shows the right direction to the people alighting and collects the trash from the very few people who carry them. There are no trash cans in the train.
We get down the train and buy some essentials from the “Family Mart” at the station. We leave the station through the wrong exit, intending to walk. Our walks takes us through a market that we later learn is a Halloween market. The market has already closed, though it is around 7:45 pm only.
As we cross the market, we come to the crossing in front of the Ueno station. The characteristic Japanese crossings with broad zebra crossing and busy people stand out immediately. We continue our walk to the hotel until we realize that with the route being so unknown, we might be in for a longer walk than needed. We wait in the queue, as we come across the taxi ranks. There were different varieties of cards that came along. I prayed that we get the one that looks different from the rest – voila! The one we were getting was exactly that one. While waiting M told me that we should not open or close the door of the taxi on our own. Both have to be done by the driver.
We were soon on our way to the hotel.
Life of P(ay)i 